Stephen King’s 1987 horror novel Tommyknockers is likely to be made into a movie by James Wan, the director and producer behind the horror series The Conjuring, said The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday. Also attached to the project are Roy Lee, one of the producers of the 2017 adaptation of King’s It, and Larry Sanitsky, who executive produced the 1993 TV miniseries adaptation of The Tommyknockers.
Sanitsky wrote in a mission statement that was sent out to prospective buyers, “It is an allegorical tale of addiction (Stephen was struggling with his own at the time), the threat of nuclear power, the danger of mass hysteria and the absurdity of technical evolution run amuck. All are as relevant today as the day the novel was written. It is also a tale about the eternal power of love and the grace of redemption.”
King’s novel explores the power that a gas from a spacecraft has on the residents of an American town. “The project is expected to garner keen interest thanks to several factors,” The Hollywood Reporter noted. “The Tommyknockers is the second-best-selling King book of all time in its initial hard cover release and outsold such King classics as It, The Shining and Carrie. And there is already a hungry appetite for the author’s material thanks to the success of It, New Line’s adaptation that proved to be a surprise hit when it grossed $700 million worldwide.”